C-Terminome is a web application I created while working at Schiller Lab, a bioinformatics research lab in the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The web app’s creation resulted in the publishing of an academic research paper and paved the way for my first experience as a web developer.
Project Links
About The Project
C-Terminome is a web app that allows researchers to browse & search terminal amino acid sequences in protein molecules (AKA the c-terminus).
…Confused? I thought so, let me explain…
Protein molecules are really just a large chain of different amino acids molecules. There are about 20 amino acids, each has it’s own unique chemical composition. Alone these amino acids don’t do much, but, when they are linked together in certain combinations they can perform various biological operations.
…ok…
There are roughly 20,000 human proteins, each of these proteins has it’s own unique chain of amino acids. These amino acid chains can be very big (the protein Titin, for example, can have up to 33,000 amino acids) and can even mutate over time to create different sequences. Some of these sequences are known to have specific functions but researchers can’t experimentally verify every single possible amino acid sequence in the human proteome.
…ok so what’s the point…
The c-terminus (last 10 amino acids) of a protein has the potential to perform 1 of 3 functions: bind to other proteins/molecules, traffic the protein to cell compartments, and perform post-translational modification. Not all proteins perform functions though, and because there so many protein variations it becomes difficult to map a function to one of the 20,000 protein ends. Some proteins even break up and become multiple proteins each with their own unique c-terminus.
…here is where the app shines…
The C-Terminome web app allows researchers to look up information about c-terminus amino acid sequences including: where it performs a function, which proteins it occurs in, statistical data about the occurrence frequency, and potential variations of that amino acid sequence.
This information gives researchers a better understanding of an amino acid’s potential for having a biological function.
“Me, Me, Me..”
This was my first dive into web development and while it was daunting and challenging I learned more than I could have ever imagined. I learned how to develop website, how to structure a database, how to manage physical and virtual servers, teamwork, and most importantly how much you can grow then you push yourself. I also learned that the theoretical mathematics and algorithms I learned in school wasn’t all that useless (it helped me create this for the research paper).
Screenshots
